Sparrow
by Lahdolphin
Summary: Niou is dying so Marui shows him how to live.
1. sparrow sing to me the song

**Disclaimer: I do not own Prince of Tennis or any television show, literary work, etc. mentioned in this fic. The titles are from the song "Sparrow" by Scattered Trees whom I have no connection to.**

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**_360 days._**

It comes out all at once. Over night, the entire school knows and the headmaster wants to hold an assembly. People act sad and sympathetic because they should, not because they are. They treat him like he is dying, but everyone is dying, some just take a little longer. He just happens to be dying rather quickly for someone his age. Apparently that's a big deal to people, like death surprises them, as if they don't realize that's how all life ends.

Death is inevitable. It's not a really a big deal, Niou thinks.

He sits with his back to the fence atop of the school and a cigarette in his lips. One of the perks of dying is that people don't care what he does. They pity him, let him get away with things. He does not particularly mind that, though he wishes they weren't so damn obvious about it.

They used to tell him smoking is bad, that it causes cancer, the c-word everyone is so afraid to mutter around him nowadays. He did not get brain cancer from smoking so he figures he might as well continue.

"Last day at school, huh?"

Marui stands while he sits.

"Yukimura would kill you for smoking those things."

Niou tilts his head back and lets the smoke fly off.

"He wants you back on the team and if your lungs are crap, he'll kill you."

Niou smiles, "You know I'm not going to be back for tennis."

Marui slides down next to Niou. Marui never fakes sympathy and Niou likes him for that. Marui is smart, knows that everyone must die, and does not pretend to be saddened by this.

"We can hope," Marui says. He takes Niou's cigarette, spits out his gum, and puts it between his lips. He doesn't cough or gag; it's not his first. "Do you think there's a Heaven?"

"Don't know. You?"

Marui hangs back the cigarette. "I figure that when I die, I'll go to Heaven or Hell or do whatever the right religion dictates."

"And if there is no right religion?"

"I won't know that. I'll be dead."

Niou smiles around his cigarette.


	2. i heard last spring

_**324 days.**_

Marui sits in the garden outside of the hospital and smokes his third cigarette. Most people smoke to enjoy it; he smokes because he can. Dead people can't smoke, but he can.

He picks up his phone and texts Niou.

_how's it going?_

_this takes forever_

_at least they let you text  
how many more?_

_dont know  
chemos a bitch  
kill me  
wait nm got that covered_

_haha sooo funny  
don't joke about that shit_

_i wasnt jokin_

Marui puts down his phone, smokes his cigarette, and watches the bees fly.


	3. its the melody i cant retrieve

**_292 days._**

"Surgery?"

"Yup. My brain's that special."

Marui sits in the grass with Niou's head in his lap and fiddles with the fake hair of his wig. He misses Niou's real hair. It was white like the moon and the stars in the sky they gaze out on.

"That one's Orion," Marui says, pointing up at the stars. "Zeus put him in the sky. The gods did that sometimes for the best of heroes so no one forgot them. It was an honor to burn in the sky."

"Stars don't combust or burn. It's more like a nuclear reaction."

Marui threads his fingers into Niou's wig and wishes he had his wild white hair. People don't think about something as stupid as hair because hair grows back, it's replaceable. People are replaceable too, but no one ever thinks about that because they don't want to.

"He had a dog, right?" Niou asks.

"Yeah. Sirius."

"Like in those _Harry Potter_ books you read."

"Yeah, just likes those books."

"Never read 'em."

"I'll bring next time I'm over."

Niou smiles as if to say, _if there is a next time_.


	4. no matter how hard i try

_**268 days.**_

Niou wakes up with a throbbing bandaged-head, needles in his hand, chords to his chest, and fake flowers on his bed stand. There's a card with chicken scratch on it.

_Things that live can't die. _

_There's a different between being alive and living. You're alive, breathing and talking and smoking. People who live do things that people remember like Orion. _

_Are you living?_

_-MB_


	5. it seems that song has left this place

_**240 days.**_

Niou and Marui sit side-by-side on Niou's bed. An IV chord crosses over them from Niou's hand. The laptop on their laps is warm and buzzing like a bee.

"I start my second round of treatment soon," Niou says.

"I'll get you those books so you have something to do while you sit there."

"You could come with me. My mom wouldn't mind if you sat with us. I'll warn you though, it's boring as hell."

"Okay."

Marui puts his head on Niou's boney shoulder and breathes as they watch the next episode of Firefly. Niou is skin and bones, barely able to walk and hardly eating. He is wasted and tired and ill. Niou is merely alive, he is not living, and that's as good as dead.


	6. sparrow fall asleep

_**222 days.**_

Marui texts Niou:

_im bored_

_the man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness_

_WTF?_

_virginia woolf  
i dont know what it means  
yagyuu brought by biographies and ive read four  
save me before i get philosophical and annoying_

_you spelled "philosophical" right  
youre already gone _

_urgh_

Marui smiles and hopes Niou is too, but he doubts it.


	7. cause youre safe here next to me

_**200 days.**_

Doctors say Niou is depressed and Marui disagrees. Being depressed is not part of treatment and it's not from the cancer. Depression comes from dying. It comes on slowly as life walks you by because you're tethered down and cannot escape or catch up to life no matter how badly you want to.

Niou sits on a bench with Marui under a willow tree. Niou kisses Marui. Their kiss tastes like bubble gum and cigarettes. Marui's lips are warm but hesitant and his hands won't touch him.

"Why are you doing this?" Marui asks.

"I'm a head-case."

"Stop joking."

"My jokes never bothered you—"

"It's bothers me now because I love you and you're dying and it _hurts_."

Niou wants to tell Marui that it's okay, that everyone dies, but it's going to hurt even if you know that because it always hurts.

He can't finds the words with Marui's lips on his.


	8. atop our summer leaves

_**194 days.**_

Niou sits in his bed and gazes out his bedroom window. Bees will work and things will grow off of things that had once grown themselves. And it must happen or it can never happen again.

His head hurts and he knows its possible the treatment is not working. He does not tell Marui, who sits at his side with his laptop, because it would hurt him.

Everyone dies, Niou knows this and accepts this, but he knows that people hurt while they are alive and inevitable death does not make that hurt any less painful.


	9. we fall and winter

_**180 days.**_

"This is humiliating."

"Shut up and enjoy it."

Niou puts his head atop of Marui's as he is piggy backed to the far recesses of his back yard. Past the hill where they watched the stars and past the willow tree where they kissed, until they are at the white fence, the edge of the property.

"What?" Niou asks.

He is set in the grass and Marui sits next to him.

Marui reaches into his bag and pulls out a book. "I've been reading sad crap lately for some reason because no matter how crappy I feel, it reminds me I could be worse."

"Poetic."

"This is poetic. Emily Dickinson. The woman was off her rocker. She wrote this thing, 'Because I Could Not Stop For Death' and—"

Niou says:  
_"Because I could not stop for death,  
He kindly stopped for me;  
The carriage held but just ourselves  
And Immortality."_

"You know it?"

"I _get_ it."

Marui leans over and kisses Niou. His words are lost in his throat.


	10. spring wont care at all

**_161 days._**

"I want to see the beach."

"We'll go when you're better."

Niou smiles and adjusts his wig.

"When I'm better."

"Don't say it like that. You're going to get better."

Niou wants to say, "If dead counts as better," but chooses not to.


	11. that we have found our place

_**137 days.**_

There are a dozen, dozen pillows (or so it seems) underneath the willow tree. Marui tastes sweet like apple gum and Niou tastes salty like crackers. Cigarette smoke lingers in the air.

Niou pulls away and pants.

"It's okay."

"No, it's not. I'm too damn tired to make out."

"It's okay, Niou."

"Stop saying that!"

Niou is angry. He is dying and it is the happiest he has been in his entire life. He does not understand why people refuse to say things until the person they want to say them to is going away. He's mad a Marui. He's mad at himself.

Niou gets up and stumbles; Marui catches him.

Niou knows everyone dies and it's never occurred to him that dying means no more Marui. Suddenly it does and it hurts.

Niou says, "I love you too."

And Marui says, "I know."


	12. sweet summer singer

_**129 days.**_

Niou wonders if dying is like sleeping. You lie there and wait, knowing it's going to come, but when it does you cannot remember when it happened. It just comes all of the sudden, like a shadow takes over your mind and you cannot remember. Only with death it's much more permanent.

His phone beeps. Marui.

_whadup?_

_youre lame_

_you are too_

_nothing_

_huh?_

_nothings up  
im reading a new book_

_what?_

_edgar allan poe_

_stop reading depressing crap  
its not healthy  
and no cancer jokes _

_but i like it_

_coming over with chocolate to watch firefly and DW  
stop being sad  
be happy damn it_

When Marui walks through his doors, Niou is so unexplainably happy that it hurts. Perhaps dying is easy, like being happy and falling in love, or maybe it's hard, like what comes after being happy and falling in love.


	13. come along

_**100 days.**_

Niou lies next to Marui in the grass and looks up at the stars. His hand feels tiny in Marui's. Looking up at the sky, he feels insignificant.

"Niou."

"What?"

"Just like saying your name. Niou. Niou. _Niou_."

Niou turns his head and looks at Marui.

Marui looks back and smiles. "Hey there sexy."

Niou laughs until it hurts.


	14. and lets walk down roads

_**92 days.**_

Marui breaks.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, _I'm sorry_—!" Marui keeps his head between his legs. "Everything's falling apart and I'm trying but I'm sorry."

Niou puts on the wig Marui knocked off while they were kissing.

"I don't deserve to be sad. You're the one who's sick. I don't have the right—" Marui's voice cracks. "I'm scared. I'm scared for you because you don't seem scared at all."

Niou lifts Marui's head and fakes a smile. He kisses Marui because that is all he can do. Nothing he can say will convince Marui that it's okay because it's not okay. Nothing is okay. It never will be okay.

Marui thinks of Niou dying.

Niou thinks of Marui alone.

Everybody is falling apart.


	15. that weve already walked upon

_**80 days.**_

Niou closes his eyes underneath the willow tree.

"I'll be here when you wake up from your dream," Marui says. He pops a bubble and Niou wishes he had the energy to sit up and taste the lingering sweetness of apple on Marui's lips.

Niou drifts into his apple-filled dreams. When he wakes up, Marui is asleep, their hands together, and his head hurts nearly as much as his chest.

"I love you, Marui Bunta," he whispers.

Marui smiles in his sleep. "More gum please..."

Niou closes his eyes with a smile.


	16. sweet summer sparrow

**_30 days._**

Under the willow tree, Niou and Marui pass a cigarette back and forth. Marui blows his smoke into Niou's face and Niou puts his into Marui's mouth.

"My mom's getting mad at me for smoking," Marui says against Niou's lips. Their lips stick and move together, tugging and pulling in unison to each syllable.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You should quit. These things will kill you. I heard lung cancer's a killer."

Marui smiles and threads a hand into Niou's fake hair. He takes a drag and blows smoke into Niou's face. When it clears, Niou kisses him.

Come morning, they're still kissing.


	17. sing your song

_**15 days.**_

"Remission?"

Niou nods.

Marui's arms circle him so tightly that his chest squeezes painfully. Marui cannot seem to find the words to express his jumbled thoughts so he just holds Niou for some time.

"It's not cured," Niou says. "Just less lethal at the moment."

"That's better," Marui whispers into his neck. "Just let me hang on for a little longer."

"I don't exactly have the strength or muscle mass to push you away."

Marui sways them back and forth in a kid-like dance. Nothing Marui did seemed to express his happiness and relief, not even the huge smile plastered on his face.

Niou thinks of this as meaning he's going to die slower.

Marui thinks of this as meaning he's going to live longer.


	18. you know that ive waited

_**3 days.**_

"I think I believe in something," Marui says arbitrarily. "Maybe not a Heaven, but something. I think people who live have an energy of some sort and that has to go somewhere. Maybe it goes into other people, people who keep on living while that person is gone."

"How?"

"In memories, and feelings, and words, and thoughts; and everything that person was and did and would have been. We remember the stuff that makes people _people_."

"That made no sense."

Marui blows a bubble; Niou pops it with his finger.


	19. all year long

_**1 day.**_

Niou sits in Marui's arms and says, "They gave me a year to live."

"You never told me that."

"It was an estimation and they're wrong all the time so I didn't bother. And what if I had died before a year was up? You would have been mad and sad and outraged because what you were expecting didn't turn out the way you expected it to."

"Reading has made you philosophical."

"I consider it perspective."

"Almost dying didn't do that?"

"I'm still dying, just not as fast as before."

"No, you're wrong. You're not going to die because people who live don't die. You've put enough of your energy into me and I will never forget you."

"You'll forget me. Everyone is forgotten in the end. You'll forget it slowly, but it'll be gone eventually. But I forgive you."

Marui shakes his head. "No, I won't. I don't care what you say, but you're _wrong_."

"Maybe I am."

"You are. You definitely are. I could never forget you because I love you."

Niou kisses him to say _I love you too_.

A year ago he was dying. He still is, but he doesn't see it that way. Everyone dies so the dying are nothing special. It's the ones who live that are special.

In the end, its the people that matter, the smiles you remember, the love you allow yourself to feel.

Everyone dies. Not everyone lives.

Niou wants to live.

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**A/N: Constructive criticism is loved :)**


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